


Lay Your Weary Head to Rest

by illumynare



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Canon-typical language, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Platonic Cuddling, Sharing a Bed, Sleepovers, Waffles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 13:43:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10992120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illumynare/pseuds/illumynare
Summary: Wash knows all about second chances, and how easy they are to lose. After Sidewinder, he knows only one thing for sure: he can't be crazy.And that means he can't sleep.





	Lay Your Weary Head to Rest

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by a conversation with Zalia and Heza, and some of their lovely ideas. Also, Aki suggested the photos. Thanks, guys. ♥

Wash knows all about second chances.

That moment when the world opens up, turns over, and everything changes. That dizzying gasp of hope, like fingers loosing from your throat, ecstasy mixed with the sickening knowledge that _you can't fuck this up, because you're a soldier now, you're a Freelancer now, you're—_

Blue Team leader now.

Wash has never escaped anything except by the skin of his teeth. He was three weeks at boot camp when his homeworld got glassed. He was a breath away from a firing squad when Freelancer recruited him.

He was one suit of armor and a chorus of bad lies away from going back to prison.

Those first two fresh starts were so easily lost. Wash knows his place on Blue Team is just as fragile.

_I'm done,_ he told Sarge, and let himself collapse into the snow of Sidewinder. And he'd really thought he was done. That he was ready to lie down and stop. But then Tucker and Caboose hauled him up, put him in the armor of their friend he'd done his best to destroy, and as soon as Wash took his first breaths through the new helmet, he was shaking with desperation to keep ahold of his final second chance.

But he still doesn't know _how._

He knew what it meant to be a good soldier. He knew (too well) what it meant to be a good Freelancer. He's used to rules and structure, harsh expectations and demerits. To being told exactly how close he is to fucking up beyond repair. 

He doesn't have the faintest idea how to be a good Blue Team leader.

The first few days, Wash feels like he's in free-fall. He gets them a jeep, he leads them away from Sidewinder, he gets them to the nearest Simulation Trooper base. (The Reds, no surprise, are next door immediately.) And he _knows_ that's right, it has to be—

But then he's sitting at the kitchen table while Tucker works the coffee machine and Caboose eats peanut butter with a spoon. 

"So, fearless leader, you got any more orders?" Tucker asks, sounding faintly resentful, and Wash's mouth goes dry, because he just. Doesn't. Know.

"What's standard mission protocol?" he asks.

"The fuck?"

"You have a mission." Wash's head is aching—he's hardly slept since Sidewinder—he hardly slept _before_ Sidewinder—but he can sleep later. Once he knows what to do. Determinedly, he goes on, "Capture the Red Flag. That's your mission. You have a standard protocol, right?"

" _Wellll_ . . . " Caboose draws out the word. "We used to have a protocol, but then it got wet, so we don't use it very much anymore."

Tucker shrugs. "Mostly, we just stand around and bitch. Or bang Sister, but she's not around anymore."

"Wait, what?" Wash stares at him. He can think of five different ways to interpret that sentence, and he's still trying to think of _literally anything else_ it could mean.

"Oh yeah!" says Tucker, and grins. "Also, Blue Team leader has to change Caboose's underwear every day. It's a rule."

"I don't like that rule," Caboose mutters.

"Yeah, when Caboose and I went on that quest to fulfill the prophecy together, I had to take over for Church, and let me tell you, that was worse than getting knocked up and going into labor."

Wash lays his head down on the table.

He ends up leading them on a raid of Red Base, and it goes okay, they capture the flag, he knows that's the goal for Sim Troopers, _it has to be okay._

"Man, Church was never this much of a hardass," Tucker complains as they march back into Blue Base.

"We just _won_ , Private Tucker," Wash reminds him, and then his heart pounds for the next ten minutes because it doesn't matter that he's the leader, if Tucker decides he's had enough—

Wash breathes slowly, in and out, and slowly rolls his fingers into fists, one-two-three-four-five, before releasing them.

* * *

There's one thing Wash knows for sure: he can't be crazy.

There's no Article 12 on Blue Team. They don't have any hospitals where they can stash a broken soldier until he screams out his nightmares and learns how to stop clawing open his own skin. If they don't want him anymore, they'll call the UNSC. (Maybe they're calling them now.)

Wash has to get this right the first time.

He thinks he can do it. He's been convincing people he was sane for years. Even when he was in prison, and it felt like the walls were continually crawling towards him, he still held it together.

But something seems to have broken in him with they fought the Meta. When he said, _I'm done,_ and threw away everything to help this stupid, senseless team. Wash goes to sleep that first night in Blue Base, and he dreams that his blood is turning into cold wires and circuits beneath his skin, and he's locked up somewhere small and dark as the memories rattle around in his head, _you killed them you killed them_ , faster and faster, _it's your fault your fault,_ and his teeth buzz and he can't breathe _AllisonAllisonAllison—_

_make(){ it. **STOP();** }_

Wash wakes up, and barely manages to stumble into the bathroom before he vomits.

When he's done, he leans his elbows on the toilet seat and shakes. He wants to peel open the skin of his arms and check for wires. The bile burns in his throat and his nose like ones and zeroes. 

But he can't go crazy again. He can't.

The day after, he twitches at every noise. Caboose appears silently behind him, and Wash has a knife to his throat before he can even think.A moment after, he's stumbling back, putting his knife away, thinking, _how could you how could you how could you = alert() { error; error; error; }_

The next night, he tries to sleep. He dreams that he's made of numbers and wires, and he wakes up screaming and trying to claw at his arms through his kevlar undersuit.

He decides: he can't sleep again.

He can't.

It makes perfect sense.

* * *

There are stim pills stored in his suit, but for now, coffee is enough. Coffee and knowing what will happen if he fucks up again. Wash can't go back to prison, he can't _let me out let me out let me out—_

Caboose gets ahold of the coffee maker and jams coffee grounds into every crevice. Tucker whines for twenty minutes, but Wash finds himself secretly grateful. It's kind of soothing, taking the machine apart and cleaning each piece.

If only he could be taken apart, cleaned, reformed—

He thinks again about peeling up his skin to check for wires again, and swallows. That's crazy. He's not allowed to do that. Normal people don't need to do that.

When he finishes cleaning the coffeemaker, he takes it apart and washes it two more times, just to be sure. Just to enjoy that feeling of gritty, ruined pieces becoming whole again.

* * *

Tucker doesn't like Wash.

Like, at all. 

They drag the fucker back from Sidewinder because Caboose wants him, and Tucker… well, he's feeling guilty that he didn't stop either version of Church from destroying himself up on a pointless crusade. Letting Caboose adopt a Freelancer seems like the least he can do.

It also seems like a terrible idea.

Agent Washington is pale and twitchy and only gets worse on further acquaintance. He has an empty, mindless stare, and absolutely no sense of humor, and a way of saying. "I'm fine, Private Tucker," that makes Tucker want to punch him in the face. 

He also doesn't sleep.

It takes Tucker a while to work that out, once they find a new base and settle down. Tucker has other things to think about, like sending a properly encoded message to Junior. He isn't ever letting a C.O. and his baggage get between him and his son again.

But at a certain point, Tucker notices: Wash doesn't sleep.

Like, ever.

It's kind of creepy, and also kind of dumb. Church didn't sleep, but that's because he was a ghost. AI. Whatever.

Wash doesn't sleep because he's a . . . crazy Freelancer?

"Dude, if you don't sleep, you'll go crazy," he says, and Wash fixes him with a hollow stare.

"I'm totally, completely sane," he says, like it's something he's said a hundred times before. Maybe it is. If Tucker went around acting that weird, he'd probably have to tell people he was sane all the time as well.

Wash helps them capture the Red Team flag four days in a row, and that's nice, but it doesn't change the fact that _this fucker killed Donut and Church,_ and Tucker isn't ready to forgive that ever, ever. 

But he also isn't ready when Wash falls asleep on him.

It happens near the end of the first week. Wash has been . . . honestly, the craziest Tucker has ever seen him, starting at nothing and staring at the corners of the room and scratching at his arms in a way that sets Tucker's teeth on edge.

When Tucker's sitting on the rec room couch and Wash asks him, "What are you looking at?" Tucker rolls his eyes and says, "Stolen ONI secrets beamed to me by the Insurrection, duh."

And Wash flinches, the way he does when something reminds him of Project Freelancer. (Tucker hates that he's already nearly fluent in Agent Washington flinches. He hates it just as much as he hated being fluent in the different ways Church would screech or sigh or mutter _I'm going to kill myself, I'm going to kill myself,_ and FUCK YOU, CHURCH—)

"I'm looking at pictures of Junior, geez." Tucker tilts up the tablet so Wash can catch a glimpse. "You can come check it out if you want."

To his surprise, Wash does. He sits down beside Tucker and leans over his shoulder and says, in a baffled voice, "He looks like a normal Elite."

"Hey, Junior's better than normal," Tucker says indignantly. "Top of his class, _and_ he made the basketball team." He swipes the screen to another picture. "Aw, yeah, here he is at his third grade graduation." 

It's not that Tucker _wants_ to share anything with Wash, it's just that he understands what it means for Junior to attend a private academy for the kids of UNSC officers (unlike Caboose) and he doesn't mutter _kill it with fire_ (unlike Church). So Tucker shows him the pictures from Junior's school play—his son got cast as Romeo, fuck yeah of course he did—and then, since Wash isn't trying to escape, he starts showing him the pictures from when they were on Sanghelios together.

And he's aware that Wash has started leaning on him kind of heavily, and it's weird, but honestly Tucker doesn't care, because he hasn't gotten a chance to talk about Junior in so long. Until suddenly he realizes—

Wash is sleeping. 

Mouth open, face slack. The crazy ex-Freelancer is leaning against him and _sleeping,_ and making little snuffling noises like a normal person who hasn't killed two of Tucker's friends.

Tucker thinks, _What the fuck._

And then doesn't move for twenty minutes, until Wash snorts suddenly, stands up, and stumbles away without a word.

Fucking lunatic.

* * *

If he isn't good enough, they'll send him back.

Wash knows that, he's always known that, it's been the rule of every family he ever had. And he's always failed and he thinks he's going to fail again. Tucker is always impatient with him, and Caboose always calls him Church, and they don't want him. They can't want him.

He can't sleep. He's tried a few more times, but every time the nightmares send him screaming awake. 

There was a time when Wash could take the nightmares. When he was Recovery One, he didn't make a sound. He woke up with a shudder, and he swallowed— _you are not a computer you are not Epsilon you are not dead_ —and flexed his human-not-human fingers, and went back to work.

But now there's no revenge burning in his gut. Not even a desperate, _fuck-you-all_ desire for freedom. There's just a base and a flag and two idiot soldiers who saved him but don't really seem to want him, and without anything to fight for, Wash is falling apart.

He's going back to prison.

He's going, but he's not there yet, and he can't help clinging to every ritual that seems like it might keep him out.

2 A.M. and Wash decides that it's time to take the coffeemaker apart again. He can't quite remember why it's important, but it feels good to rinse the pieces and arrange them in a line as he finishes with each one.

He's not crazy.

(He can't do this.)

Wash's heartbeat pounds against his ribs, throbs behind his eyes and in his fingertips. He can't do this, can't be normal, doesn't even remember how—but he can't go back to prison, he can't _he can't—_

"Hey, Wash."

He startles and drops the coffee filter basket. Turns. See Tucker slouched in the kitchen doorway.

"What is it, Private Tucker?" 

His tongue feels fuzzy and numb. He's not even sure why he's trying, except he has to, he can't go back, he has to—

"You need to sleep," says Tucker. "You're fucking crazy, man."

"I'm totally, completely—"

"OH MY GOD A SLEEPOVER." Caboose appears in the doorway behind Tucker. "Dibs on big spoon."

"What?" Wash's voice cracks, and he doesn't even care. He doesn't understand this.

"I had a lot of sleepovers with my sisters. I am very good at them."

"Okay, I never believed I'd say this, but listen to Caboose."

Wash feels trapped, defenseless before their eyes, and without meaning to, he says, "I can't sleep—I'll just—"

"Yeah, we've all heard you screaming, dude. Fucking _Red Team_ has heard you screaming. I'm just glad Donut isn't here to ask if we—" Tucker cuts himself off. "Anyway. We're having a sleepover."

It still doesn't make sense, but Wash doesn't have it in him to protest. He stumbles after Caboose into the rec room, where there is already a pile of pillows and blankets. He lets Caboose strip the last pieces of his armor off. When Tucker arrives with three mugs, Wash accepts the one he's handed.

He wraps his fingers around the warm ceramic. Heat against his palms. The scent of milky hot chocolate. Those aren't things computers can feel. He takes a sip, and—

"It's good," he says, surprised.

Tucker looks absurdly proud. "Old family recipe. My mom made the _best_ hot chocolate."

Wash takes another sip. His heartbeat is slowing down. He feels . . . warmer. More real.

"I can tell you a bedtime story," Tucker adds, "but I gotta warn you, it's gonna be totally NSFW, _bow-chicka-bow-wow._ "

And Wash smiles reluctantly into his mug. "No thanks," he mutters.

He finishes the hot chocolate. He looks at the pillows and his heart thuds in fear again, because if he dreams he isn't human one more time, he doesn't think he can come back from it.

But Caboose has got an arm hooked around his shoulders and he just rolls over with Wash, down onto the pillows, and his body is tucked along the length of Wash's spine, and it's like warmth and safety being downloaded straight into his skull, and Wash is, he is—

_Wanted._

Tucker settles down beside them, and Wash stares at the back of his neck, feels Caboose breathing on the back of _his_ neck, and he can't understand why Tucker trusts him enough to turn his back on him, can't understand why Caboose cares enough to cradle him, but he's warm and he's safe and his heart beats slower, slower.

He sleeps.

* * *

He wakes up, and there are phantom circuits shivering over his skin, but he's squashed between Tucker and Caboose and he can feel them both breathing, both their hearts beating, and he breathes in time to them and thinks, _Maybe I'm human._

He sleeps again, and doesn't dream.

* * *

Wash wakes slowly. He's alone now, beneath a pile of pillows and blankets, but he can hear people moving nearby, and hushed voices.

"Excuse you, moron, obviously pancakes are the best."

"But I do not think Agent Washington likes pancakes."

"You just say that because _you_ don't like pancakes."

Wash thinks about that, his eyes still shut. Pancakes. His mother used to make them sometimes, from a mix. They were mealy and a little dry, but still a treat because of the syrup.

Tucker's voice rises. "Fuck you, I am _not_ cleaning out the waffle iron again!"

York always claimed he had a family recipe for "famous home-cooked waffles," but he never got around to making them. Wash had once dreamed that someday, when the war was over and the Freelancers were all decorated veterans, they would eat waffles together—

He sits up abruptly. "I'll clean it."

"What?" Tucker stares at him. "Oh hey, you're awake. Please don't be crazy anymore."

"I'll clean the waffle iron." Wash's head is swimming a little, and he has to squint against the morning light, but he still manages to look Tucker in the eye. "If you make waffles."

He wants this. He wants it more than anything, to sit with his team and eat waffles—not when the war is over, not when he has his revenge, but _now,_ while they still can. While they are all still here.

"Okay," Tucker says after a moment. "New job for Blue Team leader: always clean the waffle iron."

"I will add it to the handbook," says Caboose.

Wash nods, and doesn't even try to say, _I don't believe you have a handbook._ He feels like he could believe anything right now. He's still half-asleep and piercingly awake at the same time--his whole body feels lighter than air--and there's a blue border painted around the edge of the ceiling, how did he never notice it before? Such a bright and perfect blue.

"Uh, dude?" says Tucker. "You okay?"

"The colors," says Wash, and doesn't care if he sounds crazy. "They're so bright."

"I have often noticed that," says Caboose, as if they are sharing a fascinating discovery. "And I know all their names, so I can remind you if you forget, Church."

Tucker rolls his eyes, but he's smiling. And Wash thinks, suddenly, that perhaps they're going to keep him.

"I don't know . . . why I'm so . . ." He struggles for words. It's like the first time he stripped off power armor after a long training session, and his body was suddenly the correct size and weight again.

"Yeah, it's called getting enough sleep, dumbass." Tucker gets up from the couch. "C'mon into the kitchen. I'll teach you how to make waffles."


End file.
